of silence, broken only by the gentle throbbing of the
engines. Then from the blackness near the street gate came the
sound of hurrying feet. I could make out three stumbling figures,
apparently urged along by a fourth. "Who are they?" I asked the
steward.

"They must be the three Tommies who escaped from Germany. Brave
lads they are. A couple more days and we'll have them hack in
England."

"A couple of days?" I exclaimed. "Why, it's only eight hours to
the Thames estuary, isn't it?"

"Eight hours in peace time; and eight hours for Dutch boats
now--when the Germany don't kidnap them away to Zeebrugge. But the
course to the Thames is not our course. The old fourteen-hour trip
to Hull often takes us forty now. Every passage is different, too.
It isn't only on the sea that the Germans try to bother us; they
also keep after us when we are in port here. Only yesterday the
Dutch inspectors did us a good turn by arresting five spies
monkeying around the boat--three Germans and two Dutchmen."

The little vessel was headed into the stream now, the three Tommies
had gone inside, followed a little later by the two men who were on
the deck when I arrived, men who talked French. When the steward
left I was alone on the deck.

I watched the receding lights of Rotterdam till they flickered out
in the distance. The night was misty and too dark to make out
anything on shore. My thoughts went back to the last time, nearly
a year before, when I had been on that river. I saw it then, in
flood of moonlight as I stepped on the boat deck of the giant liner
_Rotterdam_. The soft strains of a waltz floated up from the music
room, adding enchantment to the windmills and low Dutch farmhouses
strung out below the level of the water.

At that time my thoughts were full of my coming attempt to get into
Germany, a Germany which was smashing through Serbia, and already
planning the colossal onslaught against Verdun, the onslaught which
she hoped would put France out of the war. I had got into Germany,
but for a long time I had almost despaired of getting out; twice I
had been turned back courteously but firmly from the frontiers,
once when I tried to cross to Switzerland and again when I started
for Denmark. A reliable friend had told me that the Wilhelmstrasse
had suspected me but could prove nothing against me. The day
before I felt Germany I was called to the Wilhelmstrasse, where I
received the interesting and somewhat